Day 1, Bust 1

Yesterday was a long, long day.  We left Boulder, CO around 7:45 and drove more than 500 miles to Randolph, Nebraska (honey capital of the country didn'tya know?)  Our Scout 1 vehicle was having a lot of vibration issues, despite being basically new.  So Ronan put me on tire duty during the trip.  I had to run over to DOW 8 at our first stop and borrow their tire pressure gauge, check all the tires, and let the air out of a few that were waaaay over-inflated.  I then had to keep checking the tires for the rest of the day.  On the road, I've learned that you improvise, and to let air out of our big 65psi tires, I use my thumbnail.  I am now in dire need of a manicure.  And we have an Iranian fluid dynamicist named Maryam in Scout 1 with us who will be navigating so I am now a "pod monkey" meaning that I am responsibly for assisting the driver, the maintenance of the pods, syncing of the data logger, and deployment of course (which is actually a lot more complicated than it sounds).  So we get to Randolph, NE and we meet up with Sean Casey and his Tornado Intercept Vehicle.  Wow.  This was the first time I had seen it in person and it is a lot bigger than I expected it to be!  We set up at the only gas station in Randolph while we waited for the atmosphere to get its act together.  The Storm Prediction Center had issued a tornado watch right over us so we were feeling pretty confident.  Although the confidence might have stemmed a little from the fact that we became a circus.  People would stop driving, pull over, and gawk at us.  Probably 50-100 people stopped to take pictures, ask us questions, and stare.  Another consequence of being in a storm chasing fleet is that you inspire mass panic people.  Our first stop just over the Colorado/Nebraska line, I had two different 50+ men come up to me asking if there was a severe weather threat for them today and what they should do.  At another stop, a couple of guys walked up and rapped our windows and asked if we knew something they didn't.  I'm glad they are paying attention though.  Back to Randolph though.  We (and a whole bunch of other chasers who latched onto us) waited around for a couple of hours watching a few supercells in the distance over southern South Dakota.  It was really amazing to see how big the anvils get and the overshooting tops cycle so quickly!  But the storms we were watching were too far into the cold sector to get a tornado out of.  It was mostly a hail event yesterday.  The dewpoints in the warm sector were not nearly impressive enough and storms were firing on the wrong side of the stationary front.  So we watched the sun set and the supermoon rise and piled back in our vehicles headed to a hotel in Sioux City, IA.  All in all we drove 600+ miles yesterday, no tornadoes, but some amazing clouds, a lot of good practice with syncing data from pods and using the navigation softwares, and some good bonding time.  I think it was a successful first day, if not extremely exhausting.  We just had our forecast discussions this morning but the next few days are not looking promising for severe weather SOOO back to Boulder, CO (10 hour drive) until about Wednesday for vehicle maintenance and working out the bugs. A little disappointing but looking forward to seeing some more beautiful Rockies.


My vehicle Scout !

Tornado Intercept Vehicle

Supercell in South Dakota